‘Iron Liver Challenge’ online craze could kill

Adam Bennett and Dean Kilpatrick

A dangerous new online craze is seeing Brits put their lives at risk by downing entire bottles of spirits - including a bloke who necked a litre of vodka in under a minute.

Andi Doherty, better known as Skat Dagger, is part of a group filmed the latest ‘Iron Liver Challenge’ - downing a potentially deadly 40 units of Smirnoff in less than 60 seconds.

The bottom line is you shouldn’t do it

Expert

The 29-year-old father, who is covered from head to toe in tattoos and piercings, put his stunt on YouTube and has had over 2,000 hits.

Body piercer Andi, from Folkestone, Kent, calls his trials the ‘Iron Liver Challenge’ and is now inviting the public to suggest other spirits for him to drink.

He said: “I’ve downed a 70cl bottle of vodka before so I knew a litre wouldn’t be much of an issue.

“All my friends call me the land pirate because of my tattoos and my love of rum.

“I make funny videos every now and then and they always seem to get a good response on Facebook, so I set up a YouTube channel for myself and friends to start making various videos.

“I wasn’t sick after the vodka and now I’ve been asked to down a litre of mouthwash, or a litre of olive oil, eat a stick of butter, or eat silly amount of donuts.

“Not sure what I’m going to go for. Probably a litre of mouthwash”

The vlogger says that whilst he welcomes drinking challenges from the public, he doesn’t want people to copy him and his pals - after also filming a challenge where he and a mate raced their way to the bottom of a 70cl bottle of spirit.

Andi added: “We figured for the first video I should do an extreme alcohol challenge to get noticed, but I also do food and drink challenges, pranks and social experiments.

“It’s just intended to be a funny channel, I don’t intend to encourage dangerous behaviour.

“Any eating or drinking challenges are welcome.”

Dozens of people have already posted videos online of them doing the ‘litre challenge’ - which usually involves drinking a large quantity of water or milk as quickly as possible, although others have tried, with varying degrees of success, to polish-off an entire bottle of spirits in one go.

Former Home Office scientist and alcohol expert Dr John Mundy said the Iron Liver Challenge could potentially kill, if the alcohol levels in the body were raised enough.

Dr Mundy said: “Because the litre is being drunk so quickly the alcohol levels will rise continuously for around two hours.

“It is a very dangerous thing to do because you have no control over your alcohol levels.

“If he reaches between 400-450 milligrams of alcohol in his body then he could die.

“The alcohol levels slowly go up and up and up and he’ll have no control over that.

“What he’s doing is lethal, he could vomit and die on his vomit if he passed out.

“At 450 milligrams most people would die.

“If he consumed a litre of mouthwash I should think he’ll be sick as it has lots of other ingredients which you really shouldn’t consume.